


All shall fade

by Silence_Speaker



Category: Boudica Series - Manda Scott
Genre: Gen, Just a little bit of introspection of Luain's when he thinks about his son, Or Luain is channeling the spirit of the Great Dragon from Merlin, because apparently Bán and Breaca are two sides to the same coin.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-08 23:58:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4325826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silence_Speaker/pseuds/Silence_Speaker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If steel was tempered like a broken man's soul then there would be too little left in the world to fashion into a small knife.</p>
<p>Luain is simply pleased to see a man cracked and splintered stand up time after time, even as he keeps being knocked to the ground.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All shall fade

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer, the Boudica dreaming series is all Manda Scott's and it is truly marvellous.
> 
> Very vague spoilers for all four books.
> 
> Hashed out after I got introspective and overly pretentious. It seriously will not make one lick of sense unless you have read all four books in the series.

He isn’t the young man’s father, not in ways that matter. 

(That doesn’t quell the want in his bones, he would have wished to watch the child of his seed and Macha’s blood grow, to live unfettered by Romes chains and untarnished by festering hatred. But it was not his life to live. The gods set different paths for them both.)

As he looks at this leaner, harder, scarred version of himself he sees despair, he sees the end of days. When he reaches those fathomless black eyes however, he sees hope.

It is a drowning mans hope, just the barest flicker of light from the surface, but it is there in the broken remains of Macha’s son. 

(For if he isn’t Luain’s, he is _always_ Macha’s.)

He knows that others see betrayal in every line of Bán’s body; Luain sees fire in Julius Valerius. But in the man he sees step out of Nemains waters, Luain senses _change_.

(Salvation.)

Whether he calls himself Julius or Bán, when Luain looks into his eyes he can only see Macha. 

Bán inherited the best of her, his mother, the woman who haunts his waking hours. Unnecessary parts of his personality that once might have mirrored her further have been burnt out of him, laughter flayed off of his skin, happy smiles torn from bloody fingernails. 

Luain remembers the boy who had called across the survivors of the ship, called across because he had dreamed the offspring of the horse that lay within the ships bowels. 

But, more than that, more than he mentions to his son, he recalls the child’s solemn bearing broken by sunny smiles and innocent delight. He remembers how enthralled the black eyed child had been by tales of places far off, of how he had hung around the Roman, Corvus, offering the comfort of his beloved animals.

He can’t mesh the images, the boy and the man don’t belong in the same room let alone the same person and yet.

Bán was old for his years, older than Breaca as he gambled for the freedom and life of a slave he barely knew.

Julius Valerius is older still, ancient knowledge trapped in the body of a man at the peak of his life.

The man that is both of them looks to Luain like a child thirsting for knowledge.

As he waits for his son to finally complete his long nights, to travel the path that he should have taken over a decade ago...

He wonders what the gods have in store for the man with eyes burning black pitch and a soul tempered by the harshest of lessons.

He hopes that perhaps the road to travel may lead to greener pastures but he does not hold his breath. 

Those with a soul like Bán’s are never destined for peace. He is a dreamer forged into the shape of a warrior.

(There is a reason that Mona promotes a warrior and a dreamer working together but although the combination works well having both in one body lies the way to madness.)

His son, wearing the brands of two different gods, steps out of the water remade (or perhaps, shown a fresh path) and whatever the gods have in store for him Luain knows he will match his will to it, strike a path through seas with nothing more than an indomitable will.

For this man, neither Bán nor Julius, not of the Eceni or of Rome is a dreamer with the heart of a warrior.

Against him and Breaca, the Boudica, who would not quail? Would not doubt?

Two sides of a coin, a dreamer and a warrior, both of them both while being wholly neither.

Breaca leads with hair of burning copper, Bán commands with eyes of flaming pitch, Luain doubts that Rome has adequate defences for such an onslaught.

But in the moment when the man who has shucked his past twice now looks up and notices him, all Luain can feel is pride. That this man balances on the edge of a knife’s blade, his soul held between two gods who by nature are conflicting, his life a study in how to turn someone inside out of their skin...

Luain pushes, he has to, but he has never before met a man as worthy of the gods gifts as the one he is arrogant enough to claim as a son.


End file.
